Journal of Immunology and Infectious Diseases

Dr. Kong graduated with a B.S. in Biochemistry at Nanjing University, China, in 1987. He went on to earn an M.S. in Molecular Biology. In 1996, Dr. Kong completed a Ph.D. in Molecular Virology at the University of Massachusetts. From 1996 to 2000, he was a Research Associate in Molecular Immunology at Yale University, after which he joined the Department of Pathology as an assistant professor. Dr. Kong is currently an Associate Professor of Pathology and he has secondary appointments at the Department of Neurology and the National Center for Regenerative Medicine.

• Development of gene/cell therapies against diabetes, cancer and other diseases using rAAV/non-viral DNA and muscle stem cells
• Public health risks of animal prions (Chronic Wasting Disease of elk and deer and atypical Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy of cattle) and animal modeling of various human prion diseases (especially CJD)
• Roles of the normal cellular prion protein in the biology and pathology of skeletal muscle and brain
• Etiology of sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease (CJD) in human.